Tell me of it."

I did as he bade, and then together we sought the secret panel

through which I had just entered the apartment--the one at the

opposite end of the room from that through which the girl had led

her savage companions.

To our disappointment the panel eluded our every effort to negotiate

its secret lock. We felt that once beyond it we might look with

some little hope of success for a passage to the outside world.

The fact that the prisoners within were securely chained led us

to believe that surely there must be an avenue of escape from the

terrible creatures which inhabited this unspeakable place.

Again and again we turned from one door to another, from the

baffling golden panel at one end of the chamber to its mate at the

other--equally baffling.

When we had about given up all hope one of the panels turned silently

toward us, and the young woman who had led away the banths stood

once more beside us.

"Who are you?" she asked, "and what your mission, that you have

the temerity to attempt to escape from the Valley Dor and the death

you have chosen?"

"I have chosen no death, maiden," I replied. "I am not of Barsoom,

nor have I taken yet the voluntary pilgrimage upon the River Iss.

My friend here is Jeddak of all the Tharks, and though he has not

yet expressed a desire to return to the living world, I am taking

him with me from the living lie that hath lured him to this frightful

place.

"I am of another world. I am John Carter, Prince of the House of

Tardos Mors, Jeddak of Helium. Perchance some faint rumour of me

may have leaked within the confines of your hellish abode."

She smiled.

"Yes," she replied, "naught that passes in the world we have left

is unknown here. I have heard of you, many years ago. The therns

have ofttimes wondered whither you had flown, since you had neither

taken the pilgrimage, nor could be found upon the face of Barsoom."

"Tell me," I said, "and who be you, and why a prisoner, yet with

power over the ferocious beasts of the place that denotes familiarity

and authority far beyond that which might be expected of a prisoner

or a slave?"

"Slave I am," she answered. "For fifteen years a slave in this

terrible place, and now that they have tired of me and become

fearful of the power which my knowledge of their ways has given me

I am but recently condemned to die the death."

She shuddered.

"What death?" I asked.

"The Holy Therns eat human flesh," she answered me; "but only that

which has died beneath the sucking lips of a plant man--flesh from

which the defiling blood of life has been drawn. And to this cruel

end I have been condemned. It was to be within a few hours, had

your advent not caused an interruption of their plans."

"Was it then Holy Therns who felt the weight of John Carter's hand?"

I asked.

"Oh, no; those whom you laid low are lesser therns; but of the

same cruel and hateful race. The Holy Therns abide upon the outer

slopes of these grim hills, facing the broad world from which they

harvest their victims and their spoils.

"Labyrinthine passages connect these caves with the luxurious

palaces of the Holy Therns, and through them pass upon their many

duties the lesser therns, and hordes of slaves, and prisoners, and

fierce beasts; the grim inhabitants of this sunless world.

"There be within this vast network of winding passages and countless

chambers men, women, and beasts who, born within its dim and gruesome

underworld, have never seen the light of day--nor ever shall.

"They are kept to do the bidding of the race of therns; to furnish

at once their sport and their sustenance.

"Now and again some hapless pilgrim, drifting out upon the silent

sea from the cold Iss, escapes the plant men and the great white

apes that guard the Temple of Issus and falls into the remorseless

clutches of the therns; or, as was my misfortune, is coveted by

the Holy Thern who chances to be upon watch in the balcony above

the river where it issues from the bowels of the mountains through

the cliffs of gold to empty into the Lost Sea of Korus.

"All who reach the Valley Dor are, by custom, the rightful prey of

the plant men and the apes, while their arms and ornaments become

the portion of the therns; but if one escapes the terrible denizens

of the valley for even a few hours the therns may claim such a one

as their own. And again the Holy Thern on watch, should he see a

victim he covets, often tramples upon the rights of the unreasoning

brutes of the valley and takes his prize by foul means if he cannot

gain it by fair.

"It is said that occasionally some deluded victim of Barsoomian

superstition will so far escape the clutches of the countless

enemies that beset his path from the moment that he emerges from

the subterranean passage through which the Iss flows for a thousand

miles before it enters the Valley Dor as to reach the very walls

of the Temple of Issus; but what fate awaits one there not even

the Holy Therns may guess, for who has passed within those gilded

walls never has returned to unfold the mysteries they have held

since the beginning of time.

"The Temple of Issus is to the therns what the Valley Dor is imagined

by the peoples of the outer world to be to them; it is the ultimate

haven of peace, refuge, and happiness to which they pass after

this life and wherein an eternity of eternities is spent amidst

the delights of the flesh which appeal most strongly to this race

of mental giants and moral pygmies."

"The Temple of Issus is, I take it, a heaven within a heaven," I

said. "Let us hope that there it will be meted to the therns as

they have meted it here unto others."

"Who knows?" the girl murmured.

"The therns, I judge from what you have said, are no less mortal

than we; and yet have I always heard them spoken of with the utmost

awe and reverence by the people of Barsoom, as one might speak of

the gods themselves."

"The therns are mortal," she replied. "They die from the same

causes as you or I might: those who do not live their allotted span

of life, one thousand years, when by the authority of custom they

may take their way in happiness through the long tunnel that leads

to Issus.

"Those who die before are supposed to spend the balance of their

allotted time in the image of a plant man, and it is for this

reason that the plant men are held sacred by the therns, since they

believe that each of these hideous creatures was formerly a thern."

"And should a plant man die?" I asked.

"Should he die before the expiration of the thousand years from

the birth of the thern whose immortality abides within him then the

soul passes into a great white ape, but should the ape die short

of the exact hour that terminates the thousand years the soul is

for ever lost and passes for all eternity into the carcass of the

slimy and fearsome silian whose wriggling thousands seethe the

silent sea beneath the hurtling moons when the sun has gone and

strange shapes walk through the Valley Dor."

"We sent several Holy Therns to the silians to-day, then," said

Tars Tarkas, laughing.

"And so will your death be the more terrible when it comes," said

the maiden. "And come it will--you cannot escape."

"One has escaped, centuries ago," I reminded her, "and what has

been done may be done again."

"It is useless even to try," she answered hopelessly.

"But try we shall," I cried, "and you shall go with us, if you wish."

"To be put to death by mine own people, and render my memory

a disgrace to my family and my nation? A Prince of the House of

Tardos Mors should know better than to suggest such a thing."

Tars Tarkas listened in silence, but I could feel his eyes riveted

upon me and I knew that he awaited my answer as one might listen

to the reading of his sentence by the foreman of a jury.

What I advised the girl to do would seal our fate as well, since if

I bowed to the inevitable decree of age-old superstition we must

all remain and meet our fate in some horrible form within this

awful abode of horror and cruelty.

"We have the right to escape if we can," I answered. "Our own

moral senses will not be offended if we succeed, for we know that

the fabled life of love and peace in the blessed Valley of Dor is

a rank and wicked deception. We know that the valley is not sacred;

we know that the Holy Therns are not holy; that they are a race of

cruel and heartless mortals, knowing no more of the real life to

come than we do.

"Not only is it our right to bend every effort to escape--it is

a solemn duty from which we should not shrink even though we know

that we should be reviled and tortured by our own peoples when we

returned to them.

"Only thus may we carry the truth to those without, and though the

likelihood of our narrative being given credence is, I grant you,

remote, so wedded are mortals to their stupid infatuation for

impossible superstitions, we should be craven cowards indeed were

we to shirk the plain duty which confronts us.

"Again there is a chance that with the weight of the testimony of

several of us the truth of our statements may be accepted, and at

least a compromise effected which will result in the dispatching

of an expedition of investigation to this hideous mockery of heaven."

Both the girl and the green warrior stood silent in thought for

some moments. The former it was who eventually broke the silence.

"Never had I considered the matter in that light before," she said.

"Indeed would I give my life a thousand times if I could but save

a single soul from the awful life that I have led in this cruel

place. Yes, you are right, and I will go with you as far as we

can go; but I doubt that we ever shall escape."

I turned an inquiring glance toward the Thark.

"To the gates of Issus, or to the bottom of Korus," spoke the green

warrior; "to the snows to the north or to the snows to the south,

Tars Tarkas follows where John Carter leads. I have spoken."

"Come, then," I cried, "we must make the start, for we could not be

further from escape than we now are in the heart of this mountain

and within the four walls of this chamber of death."

"Come, then," said the girl, "but do not flatter yourself that

you can find no worse place than this within the territory of the

therns."

So saying she swung the secret panel that separated us from the

apartment in which I had found her, and we stepped through once

more into the presence of the other prisoners.

There were in all ten red Martians, men and women, and when we had

briefly explained our plan they decided to join forces with us,

though it was evident that it was with some considerable misgivings

that they thus tempted fate by opposing an ancient superstition,

even though each knew through cruel experience the fallacy of its

entire fabric.

Thuvia, the girl whom I had first freed, soon had the others at

liberty. Tars Tarkas and I stripped the bodies of the two therns

of their weapons, which included swords, daggers, and two revolvers

of the curious and deadly type manufactured by the red Martians.

We distributed the weapons as far as they would go among our

followers, giving the firearms to two of the women; Thuvia being

one so armed.

With the latter as our guide we set off rapidly but cautiously

through a maze of passages, crossing great chambers hewn from the

solid metal of the cliff, following winding corridors, ascending

steep inclines, and now and again concealing ourselves in dark

recesses at the sound of approaching footsteps.

Our destination, Thuvia said, was a distant storeroom where arms

and ammunition in plenty might be found. From there she was to

lead us to the summit of the cliffs, from where it would require

both wondrous wit and mighty fighting to win our way through the

very heart of the stronghold of the Holy Therns to the world without.

"And even then, O Prince," she cried, "the arm of the Holy Thern is

long. It reaches to every nation of Barsoom. His secret temples

are hidden in the heart of every community. Wherever we go should

we escape we shall find that word of our coming has preceded us, and

death awaits us before we may pollute the air with our blasphemies."

We had proceeded for possibly an hour without serious interruption,

and Thuvia had just whispered to me that we were approaching our

first destination, when on entering a great chamber we came upon

a man, evidently a thern.

He wore in addition to his leathern trappings and jewelled ornaments

a great circlet of gold about his brow in the exact centre of which

was set an immense stone, the exact counterpart of that which I

had seen upon the breast of the little old man at the atmosphere

plant nearly twenty years before.

It is the one priceless jewel of Barsoom. Only two are known to

exist, and these were worn as the insignia of their rank and position

by the two old men in whose charge was placed the operation of the

great engines which pump the artificial atmosphere to all parts

of Mars from the huge atmosphere plant, the secret to whose mighty

portals placed in my possession the ability to save from immediate

extinction the life of a whole world.

The stone worn by the thern who confronted us was of about the same

size as that which I had seen before; an inch in diameter I should

say. It scintillated nine different and distinct rays; the seven

primary colours of our earthly prism and the two rays which are

unknown upon Earth, but whose wondrous beauty is indescribable.

As the thern saw us his eyes narrowed to two nasty slits.

"Stop!" he cried. "What means this, Thuvia?"

For answer the girl raised her revolver and fired point-blank at

him. Without a sound he sank to the earth, dead.

"Beast!" she hissed. "After all these years I am at last revenged."

Then as she turned toward me, evidently with a word of explanation

on her lips, her eyes suddenly widened as they rested upon me, and

with a little exclamation she started toward me.

"O Prince," she cried, "Fate is indeed kind to us.